Abraham Lincoln

"A house divided against itself cannot stand".
Abraham Lincoln 

Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in 1865. He led the country through a great constitutional, military and moral crisis; the American Civil War; preserving the Union while ending slavery and promoting economic and financial modernization. Reared in a poor family on the western frontier, Lincoln was mostly self-educated. He became a country lawyer, an Illinois state legislator, and a one-term member of the United States House of Representatives, but failed in two attempts at a seat in the United States Senate. He was an affectionate, though often absent, husband and father of four children.

Abraham Lincoln, the second child of Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Lincoln, in a one-room log cabin on the Sinking Spring Farm in southeast Hardin County, Kentucky (LaRue County). Historical investigations have traced Lincoln's paternal ancestors back to Samuel Lincoln, an apprentice weaver who arrived in Hingham, Massachusetts, from Norfolk, England, in 1637. However, Lincoln only knew of his heritage to his paternal grandfather and namesake, Abraham Lincoln, a militia captain and landholder who had inherited a 200-acre (81 ha) estate in Rockingham County, Virginia. The elder Abraham later moved his family from Virginia to Jefferson County, Kentucky, where he was ambushed and killed in an Indian raid in 1786, with his children Mordecai, Josiah, and Lincoln's father Thomas, looking on.

In 1832, at age 23, Lincoln and a partner bought a small general store on credit in New Salem, Illinois. Admitting that the economy was blasting in the area, the business struggled and Lincoln eventually sold his share. That March he began his political career with his first campaign for the Illinois General Assembly. He had attained local popularity and could draw crowds as a natural raconteur in New Salem, though he lacked an education, powerful friends, and money, which may be why he lost. He advocated navigational improvements on the Sangamon River. Before the election Lincoln served as a captain in the Illinois Militia during the Black Hawk War. Following his return, Lincoln continued his campaign for the August 6 election for the Illinois General Assembly. At 6 feet 4 inches (193 cm), he was tall and "strong enough to intimidate any rival".

Following deftly restricting the extension of slavery in the United States in his campaign debates and speeches, Lincoln secured the Republican nomination and was elected president in 1860. After declarations of secession by southern slave states, war began in April 1861, and he concentrated on both the military and political dimensions of the war effort, seeking to reunify the nation. He vigorously exercised unprecedented war powers, including the arrest and detention without trial of thousands of suspected secessionists. He prevented British recognition of the Confederacy by skillfully handling the Trent affair late in 1861. He issued his Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 and promoted the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, abolishing slavery.

Lincoln nearly managed the war deliberation, especially the selection of top generals, including the commanding general Ulysses S. Grant. He brought leaders of various factions of his party into his cabinet and pressured them to cooperate. Under his leadership, the Union took control of the border slave states at the start of the war and tried repeatedly to capture the Confederate capital at Richmond. Each time a general failed, Lincoln substituted another until finally Grant succeeded in 1865. An exceptionally astute politician deeply involved with power issues in each state, he reached out to War Democrats and managed his own re-election in the 1864 presidential election.

As the leader of the moderate faction of the Republican party, Lincoln came under attack from all sides. Radical Republicans wanted harsher treatment of the South, War Democrats desired more compromise, and Copperheads despised him; not to mention irreconcilable secessionists in reconquered areas. Politically, Lincoln fought back with patronage, by pitting his opponents against each other, and by appealing to the American people with his powers of oratory. His Gettysburg Address of 1863 became the most quoted speech in American history. It was an iconic statement of America's dedication to the principles of nationalism, equal rights, liberty, and democracy. At the close of the war, Lincoln held a moderate view of Reconstruction, seeking to speedily reunite the nation through a policy of generous reconciliation in the face of lingering and bitter divisiveness. However, just six days after the surrender of Confederate commanding general Robert E. Lee, Lincoln was shot and killed by Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. His death marked the first assassination of a U.S. president. Lincoln has been consistently ranked by scholars as one of the greatest U.S. presidents.